


A Wing and a Prayer

by SegaBarrett



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:07:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29514378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Martha gets an unexpected guest.
Relationships: Martha Jones/Bill Potts
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8
Collections: Black Is Beautiful 2021





	A Wing and a Prayer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheseusInTheMaze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheseusInTheMaze/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who, and I make no money from this.

Some days, Martha couldn’t help but feel bored. She would type up a report, click through to the end and just stare at the words, as if they had lost all meaning.

Sometimes she would get so frustrated with the Doctor – the Doctor of her memories – that she wanted to pound the keys into dust. It felt wrong to be shown so many other worlds and then to be told to go back to her life and try to act as if a screen full of bacteria samples, Earth bacteria samples, from the present day – were the most exciting thing she had ever seen.

She could go back to UNIT, she figured, but the place had worn out its welcome the same way that everything else seemed to after the TARDIS had flown away. Until that girl walked in, that was. 

Martha had been in her office, flicking on the microscope and staring at a sample, willing it to show something outlandish that she would need to get some kind of consult for (alien outlandish or even just human-unusual, she would take either one honestly). She hadn’t even heard her at first, not until she spoke and Martha nearly hit the ceiling.

“Are you Dr. Jones?” the girl asked, and Martha looked her up and down, taking her in. She had a serious face, calm and searching, and her hands were slung at her side as she took Martha in right back.

“It is, I mean, I am,” Martha said, wondering if she should have thought better of it in case this girl was actually one of the many nefarious aliens who would take human form to try and draw people in.

But she hadn’t seen any one of those in a while, and somehow the girl before her looked too… real, somehow. Too real to duplicate.

“I’m Bill,” she piped up. Her smile made it impossible for Martha to look away. She couldn’t be that much younger than Martha – maybe only five years or so – but she seemed so very youthful that Martha was caught off guard.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Martha managed, feeling as if she was standing open-mouthed, and she probably was. She hadn’t been around enough people, recently (maybe) or maybe she just hadn’t had a conversation with anyone who mattered since the Doctor had gotten back in his big blue box. “What can I help you with?”

“I think we have a friend in common,” Bill said with a smile, “So I came to you for help with a problem.”

“Which friend is that?” Martha inquired. She was both excited – hopeful – terrified that the name of the Doctor would rumble through Bill’s words, but she also didn’t want to be let down. Bill was young, probably just a university student who knew one of Martha’s professors and recommended her. Flattering, but thoroughly unexciting.

So when Bill said, “The Doctor”, it felt as if the world was suddenly deathly quiet, and Martha stood up from her test tube and put her hands at her sides, full attention.

Martha took a deep breath and looked Bill over, then asked, “All right. What kind of a problem do you have, that I can help you with?” Trailing after it was the question, in her mind, of why she had asked Martha for her help rather than going back to the Doctor. Another of the Doctor’s scattered and shattered companions, Martha thought, although she would still always choose to be hurt rather than to have never lived through all of it at all.

Bill stepped into the light and then removed the black jacket that she wore. It was then that Martha was blinded, nearly, by the side of huge, bright-light-white wings bursting from Bill’s shoulders.

Martha sucked in a breath and looked over the girl in front of her. No matter how many things she had seen in her travels with the Doctor, it seemed that somehow there were still things left to amaze her in the universe. 

“How did you manage to get those?” Martha said, finally, after rolling over many less elegant exclamations in her mind (including at least one about how Bill was “bloody fit” which probably wouldn’t have helped the matter much). 

“I just woke up and they were there,” Bill replied, “Just right there, springing out of my shoulders. Gave me such a fright that I fell out of the bed and would have sprained my hand, but the damn things lifted me off the ground a little and well, then I don’t know. I figured that the Doctor would know about this sort of thing – maybe he’d even been the cause of it, you know how he is – but I walked around the box and didn’t see one single solitary blue box, so then I had to think, well, outside of it. The box, that is.”

“I mean, I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation,” Martha managed, “I just can’t entirely consider what it could be. It might help to get you into an X-ray machine, maybe?” She remembered the day that she had seen the Doctor’s two hearts, clear as day, flashing on the screen, and thought she would never be that surprised ever again.

Each day seemed to make that a promise she could never keep to herself, however. 

***

The X-ray revealed only that yes, Bill did have wings and, yes, they did seem to be “stuck on proper-like” as Bill described it, but not where they had come from or if there was somewhere they planned to be going.

“Well,” Martha said, “I have some good news and some bad news.”

“Well, hit me with the bad news first, huh Doc?” Bill asked, and her smile was so bloody charming that Martha almost forgot what she had been about to say. 

“Well, the bad news is that barring some kind of an operation, you seem to be stuck with these,” she said.

“And the good news?” Bill replied. 

“The good news is… well, I mean, I guess you don’t ever have to wait for the bus again.” Martha felt a little faint, looking at her. She wanted to reach out and strum her fingers over the soft white feathers, but she thought that might be a step beyond the usual doctor-patient relationship, if indeed that was what they were doing here. “And you’ll be a fascinating case study if you want to…”

Martha never got to finish what she was going to say, because Bill leaned in and pressed a kiss to her lips that nearly knocked her off her feet.

When they broke apart, slowly, Martha let out a small, shaky smile.

“What was that for?” she asked with a chuckle.

“You just kind of looked like you needed a kiss. Was I right? Or, uh, was I just… um, well…” Bill began.

Martha leaned in and kissed her back, then allowed herself a moment to rest her lips against one of the feathers, feeling it soft against her cheek. 

“You’d better not fly away on me,” she whispered in her ear.

“I think I’m here to stay.”


End file.
